A bad day for Moretti
but a lucky one for the Auto Sport Ferrari Team
Monza,
March 29, 1998
- Fourth
win at Monza for Bscher in a sequence
- Two
Ferrari in front at the start
- Ferrari
finishing 2nd and happy Tifosi
Although many people expected the
famous 1000 Kilometers of Monza to be won by a
Ferrari in 1998, the car that eventually came in
on 1st was a McLaren-BMW. Dr. Thomas Bscher, a
banker from Cologne/Germany well known for his
passion for Maserati cars, and his co-driver
Geoff Lees piloted their McLaren F1 GTR to the
win.
Initially,
everything had looked like if the Ferrari 333 SP
of the team Moretti/Baldi/Theys was again to
dominate this race after winning at Daytona and
Sebring earlier this year. They had been on the
pole position, having set a time of 1:37,584 in
qualifying. Another 333 SP of the Doyle-Risi
Team, piloted by Taylor/van de Poele, had gained
the 2nd position on the grid.
After the start, the two Ferrari had
taken the lead immediately, but they were forced
to come into the pits for refueling very early
and so the McLaren took over their leading
position. The Monza 1000 Kilometers use the same
reglement as the 24 Hours of Le Mans that gives
advantages to the GT-cars compared to the sports
cars since the latter's tank capacity is about 20
liters lower than the one of the GTs due to these
regulations, despite of the fact that the
consumption of the sports cars is higher than the
one of the GTs.
Nevertheless,
the two Ferrari regained the lead again for a
while, but shortly after several problems took
any chance to win from them.
Van
de Poele ended up with an empty tank, but was
able to continue the race after his teammate
Wayne Taylor had provided him with some gas out
of a portable container (this action was actually
not conformable to the regulations). They
eventually came in on 6th position, missing 26
laps on the winning car, but were soon taken out
of the ranking due to their unorthodox way of
handling the fuel problem.
The
Momo-entered Ferrari spent much time in the pits
to reline the brakes. After its sixth pitstop,
its engine somehow refused to be started again,
and the race was over.
After the drop-out of the Momo car,
there were no obstacles left to take the overall
win from the McLaren-BMW of Bscher and Lees. They
eventually came in on 1st, while the Ferrari 333
SP of Calderari/Bryner/Zarda/Nappi was the lucky
2nd. This result achieved by the yellow Ferrari
made the many Italian tifosi who had come to the
royal park at Monza very happy after they had
been somewhat depressed by the drop-out of the
favorite 333 SP.
The
yellow 333 SP was race-prepared by Team Sport
Auto and is very likely to be seen at Le Mans in
June as well. The team for the famous 24 hours
race will probably consist of Enzo Calderari,
Alex Caffi and Massimiliano Papis; Lilian Bryner,
the lady-driver from Switzerland, will obviously
not participate. She recently pointed out that
the 333 SP is a really hard to drive car compared
to her Porsche 911 GT2 which she used to drive
last year.
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